This is not only about racism…

This is not only about racism, it is also about police brutality. Would the furor die down if only police would kill innocent white people in the same proportion as blacks? It is a shame that more often than not the general problem of police brutality is left out of this discussion. Eric Garner was assaulted and killed because police thought he was selling cigarettes without paying taxes – the very punishment many extremists call for to deal with those who don’t pay taxes. Let’s be clear, one of the reasons Garner was assaulted and killed was because of the threat he posed to tax revenue and it is a very clear example of how regulations are backed by force.

Yet while we are overloaded with numerous inane laws and regulations and perpetual calls for even more laws and more regulations, what do we expect to happen but more absurd brutal deaths at the hands of government agents whose only focus should be protecting individual rights but are instead focused on enforcing arbitrary laws where no rights are violated.

No knock raids. Civil forfeiture. The war on drugs. The militarization of police. Assaulting and killing people for the ‘crimes’ of not paying taxes on cigarettes and jaywalking? This is insane. In Utah, police killed more people than gang members, drug dealers, or child abusers. Police killings were second only to homicide by intimate partners. In fact, statistically, if you interact with the police (at least in Utah) you are just as likely to be killed by them as you are by a random person on the street, and if you are black, the chances are likely even higher. No doubt the majority of police officers are decent people, but your life should always be safer when you interact with police, not more dangerous.

Advocates of civil liberties have been warning about the rise in police brutality for decades, a warning ignored by the right and obfuscated under the veil of racism by the left – and made worse by the perpetually increase of yet more laws and regulations clamored for by both. Many steps could be taken to alleviate this problem, including police cameras and independent review of police killings, but a primary goal needs to be to bring back the proper moral function of police. Police should be, and only should be, agents that protect the rights of individuals (of any race) and not agents whose purpose is to violate those rights.

The FDA, forged in misery and sustained in suffering

When the first effective antibiotics were discovered, it was soon realized they were actually inexpensive industrial compounds. Easily available in a solid or powder, the liquid forms however were rare and only the company that discovered the compounds had an effective water soluble version.

Hopeful competitors tried many kinds of solvents, and some sold harmful ones. In the most infamous case a deadly solvent was used, killing dozens of people in the US and forging the political demand for a regulatory agency with real power.

The predecessor to the FDA was formed, celebrating the animal testing model and rigorous scientific trials that were popularized by the German company which discovered the compounds. New drugs would take 1 – 2 years. Yet within weeks of this regulatory bodies inception, a powerful new antibiotic that was effective against the majority of Flu strains was discovered, and that Flu season was predicted to be a very bad one.

As the season approached and testing dragged on and on, the bodies started piling up. Instead of simply not using solvents known to be deadly, the regulatory body insisted on it’s rigorous testing model. The same politicians and doctors who cheered the new regulatory body now changed their minds and demanded an early release of the drug. The government never wavered from the scare and irrational over-reaction of dozens of people dying, and tens of thousands would die from a vicious flu season that otherwise would not have.

The fascinating story of the formation of the FDA type regulatory body was told in Thomas Hager’s superb “The Demon Under the Microscope”

That was the circumstance the FDA was forged in, and it has pretty much repeated this story over and over again. New drugs now take many more years and anywhere from half a billion dollars to more than a billion to get to market. Patients lying on their death beds are not allowed to try experimental medicine for fear it may ‘hurt’ them – even though we can drink ourselves to death perfectly legally and consume numerous products we certainly know cause cancers and other illnesses.

If we ‘own’ our bodies, it is certainly not only in the context of unwanted pregnancies that is so. We should all have the choice to try any medication or food we want, without some overbearing parental figure treating us all like ignorant children. If we have a right to life, then we have a right to pursue the material means to further and enrich our lives – without having to get some bureaucrats approval.

Will it ever be possible to reduce wild animal suffering?

I’m not a vegetarian, but I sympathize with the ethical foundation of it. There is nothing wrong with desiring to see less animal suffering in the world, it’s just hard to see how much good will come of it when the entire natural world is full of an overwhelming amount of suffering, and I choose to engage my limited time an resources in other areas in efforts to reduce suffering. The natural state of existence of every living entity on the planet is one of brutal suffering, perpetually on either the verge of starvation, disease, injury, or of being eaten alive – contrary to our Disney esque portrayal of animals all living in natural harmony with each other. It’s hard to see how any progress could be made against this form of suffering, even if everyone stopped eating meat immediately, all living entities will still face the same brutal hardships. But this interesting youtube lecture hints at some ideas to reduce it, while identifying the problem and elaborating on it.

“Reducing Wild Animal Suffering” by Adriano Mannino & Ruairí Donnelly

In reality, the only way I could imagine an end to that kind of suffering would be in a vastly wealthier world full of vastly more intelligent artificial systems that could micromanage the biosphere, keeping populations in relative check, feeding meat eaters with synthetic or cloned foods, and probably drawing some line on the complexity of the animals we are concerned about (after all, bacteria do not ‘suffer’)